The View: Florida Civics Teacher Mike Rivera & Joy’s Comedy Corner

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The View: Joy’s Comedy Corner

Recently, The View invited Hilarious Teachers to share their best material in a How Funny Are You? contest. One winner was chosen: Mike Rivera, a middle school civics teacher. He returned to The View to claim his prize and talk with Joy.

When they said the winner would get to perform a full standup set, I guess I didn’t imagine that every joke would be prompted by Joy herself. Is this how things always operate in the comedy corner?

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The View: Mike Rivera Standup Comedy

The View featured Florida civics teacher Mike Rivera in Joy’s Comedy Corner after he won a competition among funny teachers recently on the show.

Joy Behar told Mike that she also used to be a teacher before pursuing standup. She asked him if he thinks there is a connection between the profession.

“What they pay us is a joke,” he said. This guy is clever. “It just takes 33 cents a day to feed a teacher for a month.”

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The View: Standup Comic Teacher Mike Rivera

Joy said she taught high school English, and Mike mostly works in middle school. As a teacher in Florida, he teaches civics, and that must require quite a bit of patients.

One student recently volunteered to grade his own test. “I’d sooner have Charlie Sheen run my pharmacy,” he joked.

As for substitute teaching, Rivera said it is the scariest job out there. “Even SEAL Team 6 goes, ‘You’re on your own.’”

The View: Mike Rivera Vs Curling Iron Girl

What really goes on in the teacher’s lounge? “If I had a nickel for every time I heard the word ‘little bleep,’ I’d be a billionaire by now,” he said.

Despite winning this national comedy contest, Mike said he has been upstaged at school by that girl who burned her hair off with a curling iron, who is a student there. She was in her class last year.

The View: Male Pattern Baldness

Mike said that he should have thought to make a viral video, but he has male pattern baldness. I think Joy told him to try a Donald Trump combover.

Rivera said that he is single, but he was once engaged to another teacher, but joked that it was when he was 13. As for engagement rings, “it’s a conspiracy by the diamond companies…. I’m a teacher. Where am I going to come up with $200?”

Good luck to Mike. I think that something like standup comedy could work well in tandem with teaching, because you could perform on weekends and during the summer.